TOPIC:‌“Judgment - God's Day of Reckoning”

                  by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap

 

TEXT:‌Acts 17:22-34

 

‌‌“God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness.” (Acts 17:31)

 

‌Though judgment is part of the total message of the Bible, a truth of divine revelation, some ministers never speak on the subject. But such a truth must be preached and proclaimed as part of the total message of the New Testament. Paul preached it. It was with a deep sense of responsibility and compassion that caused Paul to write to the Ephesian believers: “For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God…that for the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears” (Acts 20:27, 31).

 

‌Now I know the thought of a future judgment is unpleasant to many and unthinkable to others. Yet, unpopular as it may seem, out text states that God “has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness.” And He will! Permit me in this message to set forth in clear and understandable language the Biblical truth of a coming judgment for all men.

 

I.

 

‌To begin with, let me call your attention to the SURETY of judgment. Notice the words of our text: “God has appointed a day” (v. 31). One of the most remarkable facts which confronts the student of the Bible is the abundant testimony given by God of a future judgment both for sinner and saint.

 

‌Way back in Genesis Enoch declared: “Behold, the Lord comes…to execute judgment upon all” (Jude 14, 15). David the Psalmist declared: “Behold the Lord…for he comes to judge the earth; he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth” (Psalms 96:13). Solomon wrote: “God shall judge the righteous and the wicked” (Ecclesiastes 3:17). Christ Himself said: “That every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). Paul the Apostle wrote: “For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:10). The writer of Hebrews declared: “And it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

 

‌And we could go on to show that most of the writers of the Bible speak of a coming judgment. On almost every page of Scripture it is mentioned. Men may reject it, deny it, dispute it, but the Bible declares it as a fact. As Leon Morris, in his book, The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment, wrote: “Statements about the future judgment are so frequent and so basic to the thought of the Biblical writers, that no theology which fails to do justice to it can be reckoned as true to the New . . .